Hacker News Reader

You shouldn't. http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/09/18/kickstarter...

Basically the R&D costs for this type of product are in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Because this is blazing new trails in material science and electrical efficiency of individual components, it's impossible for a modestly funded startup to get the disruption factor by identifying shortcuts or optimizations.

View on HN

You don't need to do that kind of expensive research if your goal is just to make a nifty color changing lightbulb and you don't care so much how expensive it is to buy or operate.

The hard problem is making an LED bulb that competes with incandescent or CFL bulbs on both quality of light and total cost of ownership. So far I haven't seen Lifx come out and directly claim that they are trying to solve that problem (but please let me know if they have, I'm curious).

10w RGB COB LED + enclosure with heat sink + control board.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com